Cool Drinks From Hot Climes, From Batido to Sinh To

By ELAINE LOUIE

Published: June 12, 1996

COLOMBIANS call them batidos, which translates loosely as ''shakes.'' Mexicans call them preparados or licuados. By any name, they are delicious summer drinks -- fruit blended with sugar, milk or water and whipped until smooth and foamy.

The drink, found throughout Central and South America and Southeast Asia, is increasingly showing up in the restaurants and on the streets of New York. It may be sold in a paper cup at a corner vendor, or in a plain glass at a mom and pop restaurant.

A batido can be made with nearly any fruit. There are batidos of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. There are those made from tropical fruits -- mangos, papayas or soursop (guanabana) or of bananas, tamarind and passion fruit (maracuya or granadilla). Batidos are often made from the tomate de arbol, a sweet-tart vegetable that is eaten as a fruit in Latin America. Pineapples are a natural ingredient, and so is the less familiar mamey, a fruit that tastes just faintly like an apple.

One of the more fancifully named batidos is called morir y sonando (dying and dreaming) and is made from the unlikely but delicious combination of orange juice, milk and sugar. The drink is pale orange in color, creamy, tart and refreshing. It tastes like a Creamsicle melted to a beautifully balanced liquid.

There are also batidos that blend puffed wheat or granola with milk, sugar and, sometimes, fruit. Ask for trigo, and a Colombian will whip together puffed wheat, milk and sugar, so that there is a hint of the grain flavor in the smooth, creamy liquid breakfast. At Mimo's, a tiny 10-by-14-foot batido shop in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, one concoction mixes papaya, banana, granola and orange juice with milk or water.

When fresh fruit isn't available, batido aficionados use frozen fruit pulp, which is sold in packages in some Latin American groceries and includes mango, papaya, mamey, coconut, tamarind and guava (guayaba). A 14-ounce package sells for around $1.39 to $1.59.

What may not lend themselves to the drink are Persian and Crenshaw melons, said Zarela Martinez, the Manhattan restaurateur and author of ''Food From My Heart'' (Macmillan, 1992), a book of Mexican recipes. ''The flavors are too subtle,'' she said.

Within the world of batidos, there are subcultures. Some people prefer their batidos with milk, others with water. At Mimo's, when the customer orders one of the 15 flavors, the waiter asks, ''Con agua o leche?'' (With water or milk?) In Brazil, batidos are sometimes made with white rum.

A batido is a drink where imagination can play. There is no dogma about recipes. Ms. Martinez mixes equal parts strawberries and milk, with a few ice cubes and a spoonful of sugar. At Nam Phuong, a Vietnamese restaurant in TriBeCa, there is the delicately flavored sinh to man cau: ''sinh to'' translates to ''shake'' and ''man cau'' is ''soursop.'' The recipe sounds so odd as to be implausible. But it works. For an eight-ounce drink, Ky Bui, an owner, mixed 1 1/2 tablespoons of evaporated milk, 1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh soursop, 1 tablespoon of sugar and 12 ounces of crushed ice. It had the faintest flavor of the soursop.

''Once a week, my mother goes to Chinatown, chooses the soursops, peels them and separates the flesh from the seeds,'' Mr. Bui said. ''She does the work, and I have the easy part.''

Finding batidos can be a game of hide and seek. Some Colombian, Puerto Rican or Vietnamese restaurants have them, but not all. When they do exist, sometimes they're listed on the menus, and sometimes not. Instead, batidos may be written on a menu board hung on the wall. The price is $2.50 to $3 for a drink that is around 12 to 14 ounces.

If a batido can't be bought, it can always be made at home, and leftovers can be reconstituted. Just toss the batido back in the blender, add an extra ice cube and whip until it froths.

Strawberry Preparado

(Adapted from ''Food From My Heart'' by Zarela Martinez)

Total time: 5 minutes

1/2 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced (about 1 cup)

1 cup milk or ice water

4 ice cubes

1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste.

Combine all the ingredients in a blender, and process until smoothly pureed.